Y'all Hush: Field Tripping Fayetteville

Hey y'all -

While we were in Arkansas, we tried to work in an adventure per day. You guys are good for about a 3-hour block of activity, which is convenient, because that's also how long I can disappear from work without getting caught (usually).

For the most part, I let you guys weigh in on where we'd go, but sometimes I didn't give you a vote because I got tired of Laney always choosing the neighborhood pool (more on that tomorrow) and Hagen saying, "To da paygown (playground)!!" I can only push a 2 year-old in a swing for so many hours before my arm wants to fall off. Million dollar idea, readers: solar-powered, self-propelled baby swings.

So, here are some of the places we went:

1) The Fayetteville Farmer's Market - Exactly like the Missoula Farmer's Market: they have live music with extra banjoes and beautiful organic produce and grizzly old dudes with petitions trying to legalize marijuana. Almost made us homesick.

Just about everything in Arkansas is more expensive than it is in Montana, except for liquor and face painting, which are about 30% cheaper. I like to think of it as a preschool parent subsidy.

2. The Botanical Garden Of The Ozarks - Beautiful flowers, walking trails, and a butterfly habitat.

...which is all well and good, unless you're a toddler who's been told a hundred times not to touch the caterpillars that you so desperately want to touch, in which case you decide you're ready to blow this popsicle stand:

3. Gator Golf - We don't have miniature golf in Missoula, because no one wants to spend 3/4 of their year shoveling snow off of astroturf. For your first-ever golf outing, you guys did great, though I'd never seen such rampant cheating. Laney actually scored a hole in one (though technically, she tee'd off on hole #3 and the ball went into the cup of hole #4. Still counts)

4. Wilson Park - The oldest public park in Fayetteville. We went after dinner and discovered this beautiful creek running behind and beneath the playground. Magical, really. Laney explored the whole area, until I remembered there are snakes in the south and started to get a little freaked out about it. Hagen sat on the shore and played with rocks after deciding the creek was "too sliffery."

5. University of Arkansas School of Nursing - Peg Peg showed Laney around at the nursing school, letting her sit in one of the classrooms and take a tour of the simulation labs.

Hard to say who was more creeped out by the fake plastic people with fake health issues - me or Laney. True story: When I was 8, Peg Peg and Tex took me to see the USS Alabama battleship in Mobile. That place is chock full of posed mannequins where you least expect them. I told 'em to get me the hell out of there. 29 years later, I remain staunchly anti-mannequin. At Peg Peg's school, they even have a mannequin/robot in a fake labor and delivery room that can go into active labor and give birth to a rubber baby. That, my friends, is the stuff of nightmares.

6. Sprayground, downtown Bentonville.

As a blanket policy, Hagen does not enjoy getting wet. And he doesn't generally like to run around with no shoes on, because he hates to get his feet dirty. No lie, I once saw him walk into the shelf that hangs off of our grill, bang the heck out his head, and then sit down brush the sand off the bottom of his feet. Your dad yelled, "Worry about the concussion first, buddy!"

In short: Hagen sat this one out, and we're never talking him into a beach vacation.

7. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art - Like everything else in this part of the country, Crystal Bridges is the product of Walmart money. So to enjoy it, you have to not think about how the money that built this museum was made by putting the little man out of business. Because if you don't concentrate on how each of the Walton heirs is worth 30+ billion dollars but 2/3 of their employees earned less than 25k last year, the museum and its miles of sculpture trails are fabulous! (Y'all, it's so hard to be a southern liberal sometimes.)